"Depicting My Dreamlike Inner Life:" A New Translation of Franz Kafka's Diaries

This lecture will discuss the recent, highly acclaimed re-translation of Kafka’s diaries into English. Restoring previously omitted passages, the new edition provides fascinating insights into this supremely important writer's inner life, especially the absolute centrality of literary writing, his relationship to his father, his struggle with romantic love, sexuality and the prospect of marriage, his obsession with the body, and his attitude toward Jewish culture. In his diaries, we hear the authentic, direct voice of Kafka that often seems obscured in his fictional works but might resonate with our own lives in many surprising ways.